For obvious reasons, I’ll always think of Ranma ½ when I think of pandas. When China's Nanjing Agricultural University’s Dr. Xiuwen Yan and his team discovered the potential in the panda genome, my view on pandas started to change. While pandas are definitely not known for their stellar immune systems, they have potent antibiotic compounds that we could use for medical breakthroughs.
When isolated and synthesized, cathelicidin-AM can kill harmful bacterias in the blood stream. Panda cathelicidin-AM can do more in an hour then it would take humans in over six hours. If this science can be refined further, there is a high potential that this research could help humans combat disease.
Who knows? Pandas may be our salvation! By no means am I saying let’s whole sale slaughter every panda we come across and harvest their blood for science – THAT would be ridiculous. Who would have ever thought it would be pandas though? Also keep in mind this is all stipulation.
Saotome!
[i09 via ScienceDirect]
